


Irreconcilable Differences

by rageprufrock



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teyla and John are both hot-blooded women.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

Sergeant Yates is 5'11" and weirdly shy -- for a Marine, anyway -- he has muddy brown hair and blue, blue eyes the color of the ocean reflecting the sky. During Teyla's first week of structured, "Welcome to the Pegasus Galaxy -- this entire universe hates you, for real!" class (Rodney's naming perogative, not Teyla's) he'd asked her exactly one question and it had been about the history of Athosian stick-fighting.

"It's a very long history," Teyla prevaricates.

Nobody has ever really wanted to know before -- other than John, who Teyla still suspects was asking because his complaining that she'd broken his tailbone had stopped garnering sympathy -- and she isn't sure what to say. It really is very long.

"I was a history major!" Sergeant Yates says, excited. "Medieval warfare."

"Really," Teyla says awkwardly. He nods and asks:

"Do you guys have, like, books on it?"

Teyla, because she's been hanging around Sheppard too much, says, "Um."

*

"Sergeant Yates is cute," John says breezily, sitting down at her side over breakfast one morning when rain is streaking all the windows of the mess hall. Storms on the ocean were always a strange thing, to feel the entire city rock gently beneath their feet like a mother soothing a child. On the other hand, Teyla's heard her fair share of newcomers moaning in the infirmary, horrified that they could be seasick on solid ground.

"I thought you weren't supposed to tell," Teyla says meanly.

"I can make an academic observation," John replies evenly, smiling at her from the corner of his mouth. "So you're giving him the oral history of stick-fighting, huh?"

Ronon, who slides into a seat across from her, his breakfast tray a small mound of the morning's dehydrogenated eggs and last night's leftovers, makes a faint, amused noise. "It took hours," he supplies.

"Ronon!" Teyla hisses, betrayed.

Sheppard just grins some more and plays with his toast. "I'm happy for you. I'm sure he's very nice."

"I am not talking about this anymore with you," she sulks, and shovels a forkful of eggs into her mouth.

"It's okay," John assures her. He nods at Ronon. "We can just talk to each other. Isn't that right, Ronon?"

"Right," Ronon answers studiously.

Teyla hates both of them.

*

It's not that she has a crush on Sergeant Yates -- that would be foolish, she hasn't had a crush since she was a much younger girl and now she has gray hairs, she found them last Tuesday while staring dumbly into a mirror in her room -- but she is rather fond of him. It's difficult not to be: he is unassuming and quiet, genuinely interested in the history of her people ("I double-majored in anthropology," he assures her) and he is terrible at hand-to-hand combat. It leads her to the infirmary to check on him numerous times, of which a depressingly frequent number end in her leaving Sergeant Yates on the sickbed only to find John and Ronon leaning in the doorway smirking at her.

"Well, I think it's cute," John promises her one day, eyes huge.

"He really does," Ronon adds.

Teyla stomps on both of their feet and rushes off before they can see her blushing.


	2. II

The day after Rod leaves, Teyla has Sergeant Yates in a chokehold when he manages to get out, "That was weird, huh?"

"What do you mean?" she says, breathy when he breaks out and takes a swipe at her.

Yates is breathing hard as he puts his fists up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Oh, you know: having three Dr. McKays and two Dr. Rodney McKays."

"You have no idea," Teyla agrees, and barely pulls her punch when she flattens him.

A few second later, Yates is staring at the ceiling, winded and developing a black eye when he huffs out, "You know, Colonel Sheppard said you'd probably go on a date with me if I asked you and I figure since you've already pounded me here, you won't do it again." He lifts his head to look at her. "Right?"

Teyla turns a color red most frequently seen on Rodney and says, "Well -- I'm not going to pound on you."

"Score one for the home team," Yates croaks.

*

Later that night, Teyla goes to John's room where she finds him elaborately icing his many bruises.

"Stop acting like such a child, you are not hurt very badly," she sniffs, and lets herself in, sitting at his unused desk and glaring.

"I'll have you know I was stopped many times in the hallway and asked if I was in an abusive relationship," John tells her. "Which I told people I was."

Teyla decides to ignore him and says instead, "I am going on a date with Sergeant Yates."

"His name is Dan, you know," Sheppard tells her, gleeful and all his injuries suddenly forgotten.

It's taken about six hours but it's starting to settle uncomfortably in her mind that she has not been courting in almost a decade and that she has no idea what an Earth date entails. John once said he'd take her on one if they ever all went to visit Earth but then Rodney's face had gotten so pinched and jealous she'd declined in advance.

"What is a date?" she asks suddenly, frowning. "I have never been on one."

John stares. "I -- really?"

She stares impatiently. "What does one do on a date?" She touches her hair. "Are there special clothes?" John stares at her some more, and now he's biting his lip so hard Teyla can see that he's about to break skin. "John!" she snaps.

"Okay, okay," John says, voice still wobbling with laughter and his eyes are shining. "Well first," he says seriously, "we'll do something about your hair."

Teyla narrows her eyes. "Is this why Rodney calls you a queen?"

"Rodney shouldn't be calling anybody a queen," John says easily, runs a finger through her bangs speculatively.

*

"This took a very long time to grow out," Teyla says worriedly, watching John approach her with scissors.

John raises his eyebrows at her. "You don't trust me?" he asks.

Teyla is torn, and saved from having to say anything when Ronon walks into the room with one of John's golf clubs. He leans it against the wall and surveying the scene, purses his lips and sits down on John's bed, saying, "Are we cutting Teyla's hair?"

"She's going on a date," John answers, and returns to meditating, pair of scissors in hand.

"With Yates?" Ronon asks, and Teyla's scowl deepens, he says, "That's a yes."

"I told her most people go to dinner on a date," John says, distracted. He glances up at Ronon. "What did you do on Sateda?"

"I wasn't allowed to date," Ronon says honestly.

Teyla blinks. "Was it a law of your military?"

Ronon flushes. "No," he muttered. "My mother."

"Oh, Jesus," John mutters. "We'll stop this line of conversation right here."

John trims her hair with only one interruption -- "Can I braid her hair?" Ronon asks; "No," John and Teyla say together -- and then he brushes it out and puts something he calls "mousse" into it after he swears her to secrecy about his having it. "Is it an illegal substance on your world?" she asks importantly. "Yes," John tells her seriously. "Yes it is."

It feels lighter and softer and she can't help but feel prettier, but she draws the line at Ronon offering to dress her. Not for the first time, she wishes there was at least one other woman on her team. Then she frowns and says, "John, Rodney does not count."

*

Teyla feels stupid the entire time she picks through her clothes, which she realizes with a sudden burst of irritation are all hideous and loathsome, but she's saved from having to wear them when a knock at the door of her quarters reveals Elizabeth and Lieutenant Cadman, both wearing matching smiles and carrying hangers full of clothes. "Oh, thank the Ancients," she says, and lets them in.

"I feel like such a fool," Teyla admits, trying on the 18th shirt offered up. "I am far too old for being this silly."

"Everyone should be a little silly about these sorts of things," Elizabeth says philosophically, smiling.

Lieutenant Cadman just smirks. "Oh, don't even worry about it. Yates has got half a battalion of marines in his room helping him do his hair." Teyla stares at her in wonder. "No joke. Swear on Colonel Sheppard's favorite jumper."

Teyla puts her face in her hands. "I am so humiliated."

"Oh, Teyla," Elizabeth soothes. "Everybody's just happy for you."

"Everyone should try to be happy for Ronon," Teyla says suddenly. "His mother never allowed him to date."

"Oh my God," Cadman says immediately, eyes huge. "That is the best thing I have ever heard in my whole entire life."

*

John told her that on a normal Earth date, the man -- "A gentleman," John said -- would pick up the woman -- "A lady," John explained; "Hot piece of ass," Ronon muttered; "Ronon!" Teyla and John had both snapped -- and they would share dinner or drinks together and talk.

"About what?" Teyla had asked, mystified and nervous.

"If you ever figure that out, please let me know," John tells her.

She slaps his hands away from her hair. "You are of no help at all!" she says, annoyed, which is exactly when Dr. McKay wanders into the room, humming and red-cheeked, entirely too pleased with himself and says:

"You look very nice, Teyla."

Teyla considers throwing herself out of one of the windows. "Does everyone know?" she demands to Ronon, who the marines have turned into the worst gossip she has ever known -- even compared to the horrible 14-year-old Athosian girls who all intend to grow up and marry John.

"Oh, breathe," Rodney says, rolling his eyes (but kindly), "Sheppard and I have already dismantled the betting pool. No need to get so persnickety about common knowledge now." Rodney fumbles around in one of his pockets for a moment until he pulls something shiny out and presents it to Teyla proudly. "Here -- I made Miko make it with some old pieces of console."

Teyla takes it into her hand and finds it is a necklace, with three diamond-shaped pieces of luminous Atlantean crystal knotted at the end.

She's never owned jewelry like this before, always laid away the beautiful deep red and gold beads her mother once wore until ceremonies and rituals, the state functions of her role as the leader of her people. When she closes her hand around it, she looks back up at Rodney's beaming face, John's sideways smile, Ronon's dusky grin and she says, "Thank you," because they're the only words that she can get out of her suddenly-tight throat.

*

Sergeant Yates shows up -- right on time -- at 7:30 p.m. to pick her up for a picinic on the South Pier and he looks very handsome, even if his hair looks a little overly excited and his face is very red.

"Good evening," she says, hearing her voice crack a little.

"Hi," he says, and he's more high-pitched than even she is. His eyes are very wide. "I -- you look great."

She smiles and stepping into the hallway, she sees just the barest trace of Ronon and Rodney and John standing painfully casually around the corner, staring intently at one of the bubbling columns. She decides to forgive them, just this once, for being very dumb 12-year-old boys.

"Thank you, Dan," she says, and watches him flush with pleasure. "It was a group effort."


	3. III

At 7:30 on a Thursday, Dr. Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, and Sergeant Dan Yates trailed into Kate Heightmeyer's office. She stared at them over her laptop, blinked three times, and said, "Gentlemen."

"We need help," Sergeant Yates said.

"We do not need help," Dr. McKay snapped and turned to Kate, saying, "They need help."

"Oh, trust me," Yates said bitterly. "You need help, too."

"All right, that's it--" Rodney growled, and started toward Yates with intent before Ronon grabbed him by the scruff of his blue uniform tee and held him there, sighing as he took in Kate's baffled expression and said, "Sheppard and Teyla are fighting."

Kate closes her laptop, mouth in a flat line. "Why don't you all sit down?"

*

Kate didn't do a lot of clinical group work--personally, she disagreed with the idea that revealing mortifying personal truths to perfect strangers helped, not even if they had similarly mortifying personal truths to tell you.

It was a little disorienting, then, to be sitting in between Rodney and a miserable-looking Dan Yates with Ronon lounging in a corner, masking his own tension beneath a thinly layered nonchalance he was copying badly from Colonel Sheppard's trademark laconic air.

"Who wants to start?" she asked, looking directly at Rodney since the question was mostly for show, anyway. "Rodney?"

"He," Rodney accused, glaring pointedly at Yates, "is making the Colonel and Teyla fight."

"That is a total lie!" Yates yelled, furious. "If anything--"

"Excuse me," Rodney interrupted sweetly, "you probably didn't get a lot of proper social services in your lower-middle class childhood that led inevitably to your enlistment with the Marines but in civilized society where we don't cause our significant others to fight with their best friends we do not interrupt people of vastly more intelligent orders to--"

"I went to Chapel Hill!" Yates interrupted savagely. "I majored medieval history!"

"I rest my case," Rodney said venomously. "A state school."

"Okay, you know what?" Yates snapped, turning round to say directly to Kate, "Let me tell you what's going on. What's going on is that some time between last Wednesday and this morning Colonel Sheppard and Teyla had a disagreement--"

"That's turned into a cold war," Rodney said, shuddering.

"--that has escalated to the point where people have taken stupidly drastic measures," Yates finished, glaring at Rodney and Ronon, who both looked abashed.

"What happened?" Kate asked, mystified.

"When I said, 'God, we should just lock them in a room together and make them work it out,'" Rodney supplied, "I didn't mean lock them in a room with a bunch of weapons."

"They're always carrying a bunch of weapons," Ronon sulked. "It sounded like a good idea."

"She gave him a black eye!" Rodney exploded. "What have I said about hurting Sheppard's face!"

"What about Teyla?" Yates added, annoyed. "She's been limping around the base all day and snarls at anybody who tells her to go to the infirmary."

"Which is limited to you because everybody else is too smart to say anything," Rodney muttered.

Kate stared helplessly at Ronon, who shrugged. "It's true," he said.

"So anyway," Rodney sighed, "now they're giving one another the silent treatment and giving each other a wide berth--and okay, when Teyla and Sheppard do it, the city feels a whole lot smaller than it really is." He groaned and slumped back in the chair. "And then there's the sulking."

Yates looked sad. "She broke my Gameboy last night when she lost Donkey Kong."

"On the other hand, apparently Sheppard doesn't always hit like a girl," Ronon said, and when everybody wheeled around to stare at him, he said, "At least he's using his anger."

"So is Teyla--on my Gameboy!" Yates argued. He looked at Kate urgently. "You have to do something--have an intervention--something."

"Guys," Kate said in an outward laugh--the same one that always made Colonel Sheppard's smile go a little goofy at the edges. "Come on--the Colonel and Teyla are both adults, and I'm sure they are perfectly able to work out their own problems."

Rodney and Yates stared at her, demoralized. Even Ronon pulled an expression of vague distress. He said, "We're going off world day after tomorrow."

"What if they kill each other in the brush?" Rodney hissed. "More importantly: what if by some freak accident I get in between them and they kill me in the brush?"

"What if they're both so distracted by their fight they don't pay attention and get hurt?" Yates said, more reasonably but still worried, and Kate tried not to be helplessly charmed by the three men in her office.

"This is so much stress," Rodney complained, slouching further into the couch. "This never would have happened when I was still the Colonel's best friend."

Kate frowned. "A person can have more than one best friend, Rodney. Just because Colonel Sheppard and Teyla are close in no way invalidates your own friendship with him."

Rodney stared at her like she was a moron, an expression she'd become intimately familiar with. "Okay, how many times do I have to explain this," Rodney said slowly, as if to a child. "After I got upgraded to a--" he made air quotes "--special penis friend, Teyla slotted into the best friend position--Jesus, it's not that hard."

Ronon said, "When's my turn?" at the same time Sergeant Yates yelled, "I can't be hearing this!"

Kate bit her lip, hard. "I see," she said.

Rodney ignored her to turn to Yates and say, "And don't even think about asking or telling. If you think for one minute that Sheppard doesn't know every detail of what your cock looks like and how you are in bed at this point you are completely deluded."

Yates looked faint. "What?"

"I'm sure he'll try not to let it color his command," Rodney said sarcastically.

"Oh--my God," Yates said. "She told him?"

"They tell each other everything," Rodney said, sounding disgusted.

Kate had only suffered ten more minutes of recrimination and paranoia before all but kicking them out of the office, explaining that it was nearly eight o'clock, she hadn't eaten since noon, and that she seriously doubted John and Teyla would try to kill one another in their sleep.

"I don't know," Sergeant Yates said later, picking despondently at his food. "Teyla can be kind of feral."

Two marine corporals over at the next table smirked at Major Lorne, who sighed, reached into his pocket, and handed them each a chocolate bar--but not before glancing at Rodney's morbidly fascinated expression. "It's a very old bet," he said by way of explanation.

Ronon, at the end of the day, got to go to his quarters unscathed, smirking as he left Rodney and Yates, looking hangdog at the mess table and saying, "Good luck. You'll need it."

"I've always hated him," Yates said sincerely, watching Ronon's retreating back.

"You're a good, good man," Rodney told him.

*

As nice as it was to have a regular source for sex, sometimes Rodney seriously questioned the trade offs. He was hypertensive anyway and adding the stress of being in some sort of relationship type thing with Sheppard only compounded the fact that he really didn't like it when hostile alien nations decided to either (a) capture (b) kill (c) marry or (d) all of the above to his newly-significant significant other. He'd spent at least twenty minutes ruminating on all of these external environmental stresses before he'd decided he had impeccable instincts in all other things and that he had to be six kinds of crazy not to have sex with Sheppard--whose hair really did do that naturally.

It probably spoke badly about his record with relationships that he'd never been in a situation where friends were ever thrown into the mix, and the complex interplay between his getting any play and how well Sheppard was getting along with Teyla on any given day was a little mortifying.

While--yes, yes, angry sex was really hot--angry "Don't touch me!" was not hot, and Rodney would be feeling altogether less like stroking out if only Sheppard--and by extension Teyla--would go back to their baseline of being terrifying seventeen-year-old best friends forever--only in their distinctive, non-verbal, non-seventeen-year-old best friend kind of way. He loathed to say it but he almost preferred Sheppard and Teyla discussing their respective sex lives in graphic detail over their not speaking.

Sheppard banged into Rodney's room at half past nine and mumbled a faint, "Hey," before he shucked off his shirt and pants as he went straight to the shower before going straight to bed.

"You wanna?" he asked dispassionately as he laid on his back on his half of the mattress.

Rodney stared at him from his perch on the other half of the bed. He was wearing Sheppard's Air Force Academy sweatpants--the ones with the hole on the left asscheek--and a Northeastern t-shirt and his hair was still wet and sticking flat to his skull. He was halfway through typing the word "IDIOTS" on a science team memo.

"Wow, that's hot," Rodney said flatly.

John made a sulking noise at the ceiling and turned over sullenly. Rodney could still see the shadow of a bruise on his bare back, from when he and Teyla had suffered through conflict resolution, Ronon style earlier that week.

"Do you even know what you two are fighting about anymore?" Rodney finally snapped, and when John didn't respond, Rodney thwapped him on the shoulder. "Well?" he demanded. "Because this is getting utterly stupid and you and Teyla are both acting like fourteen year old girls and frankly it's starting to make me feel like a pervert for sleeping with--"

Which was apparently about as much as John was willing to take because that was when he turned around and pinned Rodney to the mattress, shoving the laptop out of the way and sticking one hand down Rodney's shorts.

Later, sticky and pleasantly sore and still wearing the t-shirt and Air Force Academy sweatpants--but only one leg of them--it was Rodney's turn to stare at the ceiling, listening to John's smug breathing.

"You know," Rodney said finally. "This has to be considered negative reinforcement for bad behavior."

"I knew what was getting into when I got into it," John said easily, yawned, said, "Night," and turned over to sleep.

*

Friday morning was no improvement and found Yates pushing his reconstituted eggs and supernaturally crispy bacon around his plate in the mess hall without any real enthusiasm. He also had a wicked looking hickey.

"Hey," he said sadly when Rodney sat down awkwardly.

"Hey," Rodney mirrored.

They stared at one another for a moment before making the same face of mild disgust.

And that's when they heard Elizabeth's voice over the citywide saying, "Dr. McKay, Ronon, Sergeant Yates--please report to the infirmary please."

When they get there--footsteps falling quickly, because nobody gets called to the infirmary unless they've been identified as patient zero for some embarrassing social disease or someone on their team has been hurt and Rodney knows this song and dance too well--they find John and Teyla sitting side by side on a hospital bed.

They're covered in ash and soot and are breathing with oxygen masks, hunched over and slightly singed and Rodney must make some kind of noise because John and Teyla look up from studying their knees--from glancing at where their hands are sort of overlapping on the hospital cot.

"Hey," John croaks when he sees Rodney. "There was a fire on the mainland."

"I'm told it involved a cow and a gas lamp and teenagers," Carson says briskly, brushing past Rodney and Yates and now Ronon, looming in the doorway, to give John and Teyla a quick once-over before he smiled tightly. "You're coming along nicely. Just set tight while your blood work comes back--but I see no reason you can't go back to your quarters and get cleaned up, but give me and yourselves a break an' take it easy for a bit."

He looked at Rodney and Yates meaningfully. "Understood."

"Oh, sure," Rodney said the same time Yates chirped, "Yessir."

"Your hair's wrecked," John said, setting down his oxygen mask and giving a sideways smile to Teyla, who returned it much more generously.

"So is yours," she said easily, and where their hands were touching she squeezed John's fingers gently. "Thank you for coming with me. I would not have gotten out in time without your help."

John turned his palm over so he could squeeze her hand back and said, "What are friends for, right?"

Teyla smiled, leaned in, and touched their foreheads together.

Rodney, unable to contain himself, said, "What, that's it?"

*

"Shut up, Rodney," John sighed, pulling off his t-shirt and handing it to Rodney, who had collected a trail of John's sooty clothes since he'd peeled off his jacket as soon as the door of his quarters had closed.

"I'm just saying," Rodney protested. "That seemed way too easy."

"Well, there was a lot of crying and swearing to wear each other's friendship bracelets forever, but we did that all while the burning beams were falling on us," John said, and dropped trou. Rodney sighed and remembered when that was a strictly sexual thing as he bent down to add the crumbled-up pants and boxers to the pile in his arms.

While Rodney was shoving John's clothes into the laundry, he heard the water go on and John groan in relief, which he took as a cue to pad back into the bathroom and say loudly, "No, seriously, what the hell were you two fighting--"

Rodney was interrupted when the shower door opened and John's hand shot out, pulling him clothes and shrieking protest and all under the hot water, and the rest of his bitching was kissed off of his mouth, until Rodney sort of forgot that he was drenched and standing fully-clothed with a very naked John in a very hot shower.

And when John finally let him breathe, he murmurs, close to Rodney's ear, "I said maybe she was spending too much time with Yates, ignoring her other friends--and she said now I knew what she felt like before."

Rodney froze and pulled away enough to look John in the eyes and only saw raw honesty there. He said, "That's--"

"She was right," John said, smiling faintly.

Before Rodney had the chance to puff up in irritation, John added, "Neither of us were wrong, Rodney. We're just not good at having best friends, that's all." The 'But we're figuring it out,' was unspoken, and Rodney so adored the deeply hazel and warm of John's eyes that he had to mutter in irritation and say into John's neck, wrapping his arms around his midsection:

"We never had these sorts of problems when I was your best friend."

John laughed and said, "Well, that's why you got upgraded."

"I knew there was a reason I liked you," Rodney said, and John laughed and helped him out of his clothes, leaving them puddled outside the shower door.


End file.
